The Hundred-Year Winter
by Shades Darker
Summary: She rose to power during that long frost, and wondered why no one could recall her name after it had begun. Both Aslan and Maugrim seemed to always forget: She had been Jadis before she had been the White Witch.


A/N: I believe most forget she was Jadis before she was the White Witch.

The Last Queen of Charn

The White Witch hadn't always loved ice.

Charn was a cold world. When she had been young, Jadis would lock herself in her room in the palace of her father and stare out of the windows at the sun. The old, large, orange, cold sun. The days were nearly colder than the nights.

But, as the hundreds of ancestors before her, she became accustomed to the nature of her world and the fate she had been pre-destined.

When she and her sister still loved each other when they were children, they would spend their days standing basking in the light the heavens could offer them. It wasn't much, but it was warmer than anything else. But, over time, they left their childhood behind and entered the world of adults, and more importantly, of nobility.

Their mother had ruled for a short time, before she married their father. Both their parents had been harsh people. It was only a matter of time before their mother died. Jadis had been only fourteen when they had the funeral. All of the capital city had gone to the event.

It hadn't rained; Jadis secretly suspected that her world had lost the ability to rain hundreds of years ago. She stood under the dark sky with her sister to her right and their father to their left.

"This is power," he explained to them as they stared at their mother's pyre. "Power is looking upon the defeat of your enemies, even if they were once friends, and feeling nothing. Power is stoic, daughters. Power is loneliness."

The words echoed in Jadis' head for days after.

It was only years later that she got the idea to visit her mother in the hall of kings. She was now barely twenty-two, and her father was getting older and older. She waited for a harvest day to visit the hall; there was a bigger chance that she would be alone if everyone else was marinating in their own accomplishment. Few, if any, would disturb her in the hall where she would be with her mother.

Jadis walked past the wax figures of the former nobility of Charn, observing their kind faces as they slowly grew colder and fiercer, without really changing at all. They looked the same, but the shine in their eyes was different. The way their mouths smiled was twisted. They were colder.

As she neared the end of the line, and the faces of her ancestors became more and more terrible, Jadis remembered the vast history of her universe. Billions and billions of years, hundreds and thousands of empires, technology growing and being torn down again, rebellions, alliances, betrayals, and anything that could possible happen in a world had happened to her people.

They had even spoken with the stars.

And yet, as Jadis came to a stop before the wax figure of her mother's terrible face, she wondered what it had all been for? She was no fool; she knew the life of her world had reached an end. It was the beginning of the final chapter of her life. A sun that was barely strong enough to warm skin couldn't grow crops. A world so cold couldn't survive the night. Ice was already beginning to coat the dark side of the planet.

She gazed into the cold and harsh eyes of the woman that had given life to her and her sister, but she knew she felt no attachment to her.

"Why do you stare bad memories in the face, Jadis?"

She turned.

A face identical to hers gazed steadily back. Her sister's eyes – which were hers as well – had no remaining sparkle of warmth left in them.

Jadis had no doubt she looked the same. "S'hida," she greeted her twin. "Do you not think our mother looks so very fearsome?"

"Do you not think we look even more so?" S'hida asked. "It's a wax statue, Jadis. It isn't our mother."

"You haven't seen the other rulers?" she asked. "Our ancestors? Haven't you noticed a pattern to the light in their eyes? It grows steadily more cold and awful, like our dying sun. How must we look? Compared to the warm faces of the first Emperor and Empress of Charn?"

S'hida glanced down the endless line of faces, the progression of cruelty itself. "You forget something important, Jadis," she whispered. "How is the fiercest cruelty worse than the subtlest?"

She stared.

S'hida grimaced. "No matter how diluted it may be, evil is still evil."

Hundreds of years later, Jadis looked back on that moment and realized it was when she began to hate her. Not many months after that evening in the hall, their father died. They had always known one of them would take over the seat of the throne, but they had never decided whom.

She wasn't sure when the arguments became more angry and the people started choosing sides. Before she quite knew why she was doing it, Jadis was fighting to become the last empresses of her world. There were hundreds of empty seats left in the hall, but everyone felt as though only one more would be filled.

Jadis never went to see her father's wax figure, and she never knew if S'hida did, either. They were too busy with war councils, meetings, peace talks, and battles. She was working so hard to rule her people that she started to believe it was all she wanted. No longer did Jadis stare up at the sun and wonder what a young one looked like. No longer did she stand in the openness of nature where the light was strongest and close her eyes. The other side of her world was now frozen, but she still hated the cold.

Then the day she gave up arrived. They shared the same face, but they truly were different people. S'hida broke her promise not to use magic first, and hundreds of Jadis' troops died. There was no way to recover from such a huge loss. Her sister had won.

Somewhere along the line in their years of fighting, they had grown to hate each other. Jadis could live with being evil – she could be as cruel as her ancestors without batting an eye, as angry as fire, and as cold as the ice she so desperately hated. But she couldn't live without hope.

The price she had to pay to satisfy her need for hope was terrible. Jadis gave up her claim to warmth. She would never feel the heat of a sun again, the witch told her. She would never be able to quite rid herself of the bitter bite of winter. But, she paid the price regardless.

The next morning she entered her sister's new throne room, solemn as the grave. It was an odd, almost out-of-body experience to see her face sitting on the throne, smirking in triumph.

"Welcome to my kingdom, little sister," said S'hida. "Welcome to my world!"

Her terrific voice corrupted the very air as it rang out.

"I am not going to apologize for breaking my promise," she continued. "Magic was a necessary end to our war. Why did we agree not to use it, in the first place? We degraded ourselves to the likes of the Sons of Adam. You know better than anyone how our great ancestors eradicated that non-magical filth from our lands a millennia ago. We are privileged. Why not extend our gifts in the art of war?"

Jadis inhaled quietly. "You once told me that evil was evil, no matter what shape it took on."

The face of her sister grinned. "What of it?" she asked. "We were children, looking at horrible faces. I merely failed to see how you saw degrees of _lesser_ evil."

She shook her head. "It wasn't right of you."

S'hida blinked in surprise. Jadis stared back. The elder threw back her head and laughed. "Are you trying to inform your _queen _that she was wrong?" she asked. "Your wax is as cold as mine, Jadis! Don't pretend that you are bringing back the good of those fools of old!"

She shook her head. "I don't plan to."

S'hida froze, her grin of triumph still on her face. "What do you mean?"

"I gave up my right to be rid of evil so I could have hope back," she explained. "I don't feel like any kind of saint, S'hida. I don't intend to fight you to take back the throne." She took a breath. "My goal is not to culture kindness in our people, nor in you. I intend to stop our corruption from progressing. Indefinitely."

The smile slipped from her face. "You wouldn't _dare_," she whispered.

A cold tear slid down her cheek. Jadis vowed it would be the last she would ever shed. "You think I would not dare to use it?" she asked. "I see no reason why I should not."

"You couldn't have learned it," S'hida argued. "It's a legend, a myth! An old storybook tale! If such a thing existed, you would have to had given your life to pay for it!"

"I paid in much finer a currency than my life, sister," Jadis spat. "I paid my hatred of cold. I no longer remember what it was like to be warm. You know the Witches under the Mountain don't accept petty prizes like the life of a single, twisted Queen. Kindness cannot destroy contempt. Only evil can."

"You would kill everything?!" her sister screeched. "The people? The _millions _of people? All your friends, all the wildlife? You would kill your only sister? Would you murder the very air, Jadis?!"

She never answered. Jadis, the last Queen of Charn, stared at her own reflection in the eyes of a face identical to her own and spoke the Deplorable Word.

Good and evil crumpled around her feet.

A/N:

Next Chapter: The Pale Lady


End file.
